Sunday, July 20, 2014

Religion and Crime


These days we see that crime rate is increasing and it appears that people have lost faith in honest living. In earlier times crime was limited to a certain communities and those communities were branded as criminal communities by British during their rule in India. Today we see that all sorts of crimes are being done by people from most unexpected communities. Communities normally known to be decent are also indulging in civil crimes such as frauds, bribery, extortion, black mail, maligning and at worst hiring killers to get rid of opponents. In short we can say assuredly that the general level of our society, and in that I include human societies of the whole world, has declined considerably. Why this has happened?

I searched for the answer and I found that the tool most faithfully deployed by our ancestors called, ‘Religion’, has caused all this degradation of our society. You may not agree in the first place since, we all know that this tool of religion is actually created by wise men of ancient times to keep society from behaving uncivilized and take to criminal ways to solve their problems. And then to say that this tool itself has been the root cause of all the degradation is apparently not acceptable but friends, I can explain my findings here and convince you that the religions are the culprits behind all this bedlam. How? We shall see that.

If we see the history of human race in all parts of the world; find that in the beginning human society was perfectly uncivilized and they interacted in the most dissipatedly manner with each other. Might was right and strength was the deciding factor in all matters of human relations. When some wise men realized that this equation is not correct; they introduced code of practice to do justice to the physically weak but ethically good people of the society. May be, this they did because these wise men were weak and not strong physically themselves! They could convince the mighty one in the society that it is not the might but the moral value that should decide the final solution. This was possible mostly because all mighty ones were after some time becoming weak due to age or disease! It was also seen by even mighty that they are not always mighty and there always is a gradation in the mightiness. Mightier than the mighty were coming up and they were mostly the rulers of the ancient kingdoms. One theory suggests that might of intelligence overcome the might of muscle. Finally, might of intelligence was proved to be the most important. Shrewd and cunning people in the society were the instrument behind this change over from physical strength to mental strength.

These mentally strong people were seen thrusting various religions and they were called prophets. Some researchers have strong opinion that fear in the mind of a man whether he is strong or weak was the key to this logic. When some wise men began to introduce some discipline other people of equal age most probably objected to that on the grounds of authenticity. To overcome that; shrewd and cunning ones used this fear psychosis to introduce concept of supreme called God or Allah or Bhagwan whatever, it may be; and this trick worked well to control the physically mighty but unruly men in the society. A code of practice was introduced by each religion to the followers to pursue. Books written for that were called gospels of those religions and to disobey the code was deemed to be sacrilegious. People not practicing them were either excommunicated or punished severely. In that, even the mighty of physique were not spared.

Here we see that fear is the cause behind all religions and those having no fear never bothered to practice or honor any religion until and unless they were inflicted by the force of fear. The question now we search is why this fear? The answer is not too far-off. Ignorance is the cause of all fears and that ignorance is removed only by knowledge. In the beginning the teachings of the gospels were considered to be the knowledge; and human society was to a great extent satisfied with that. But there were many questioners and they broke the myth of religions in due course. They proved, at the cost of their life in most of the cases, that teachings in the religion is not the final answer to many a questions human society is pestered about. Every religion had three types of antagonists. The knowledge seekers just mentioned and the others those, who never feared for anything, were bad element in the society; or we can call them criminals or anti social elements (ASE). The third were those who had broken the code of the religion either deliberately or erroneously and excommunicated or expelled.

The first type thinkers or knowledge seekers were instrumental for creation of division in the existing religions or introducing of totally different religion. The third type preferred to go to those new religions or the new division of the existing religions. This caused creation of more religions and many more sects. The society now had many religions or many sects of the same religion and so the power of dictating was distributed over many. This created new problem and caused disharmony. Making it difficult to control people. Here we see that a system came into being mainly proposed and managed by ruling government. They called it ‘Law’. Now the society is bound to follow law, or be punished or expelled. Laws are different from religious orders. Laws are mostly of secular nature and do not always follow dictates of any religions; in some cases we see that laws could be contradictory to a religious order also. Laws and religious orders began to co-exist. Expelling by a law was similar to excommunication by the religious leaders. While religions depended on the belief of a God or Gods, and orders of religions came from that whereas Law depended on Government either king or others and laws of governments came from that king or so.

Things were not that simple and we find that some other forces were also functioning. Religions were proposed by prophets and they set in a system that was managed by some other type of shrewd people who claimed to be the apostles of those religions. They were the ones who took to the task that the code of practice given in the religion is properly practiced by all. These people were called as Priests, Mullahs, Brahmans or whatever, it may be. Over the period these controllers of religions gained stupendous authority over the people and they were the dictating authority is those societies. Many bad and clever people (ASE), entered this field of authority and took the charge of those religions and through that those societies. Thus criminal element finally entered religions. However, that ASE continued to pretend to be thorough on the face. That fooled the gullible people in the society.

All this explains how religions and governments came to be established on human societies. We have seen that religious dictates are practiced most obediently by gentle people of the society and so they are called gentlemen-women. That means non-gentlemen-women did not obediently practice the dictates of religion but only pretended to be doing that! It has a corollary that non-gentlemen or women who are called ‘anti social elements’ (ASE) are behind the criminal life in the society. Pretending to be gentlemen this section of the community often reaches important positions in the hierarchy in the religious institutes and political places with the same agility. These ASE work in groups to protect their interests, they seldom work individually. This strategy made their encroachments in various power positions easy. 

After having introduced to the way religions were created; and how they controlled believers; we shall see the present situation in our country. In our country we see that religions like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism continuously and vehemently preach principals of non-violence (Ahinsa), peace (Shanti). Christianity preaches forgiveness. Whereas teachings of Islam are so ambiguous that they are often misinterpreted (by ASE thinkers) and advantage goes to the ASE in the society. As a result believers have become docile and there resistance to those who indulge in these activities of crime is greatly dependent on governing authorities such as police or army. Interesting enough it appears that the people who vehemently preach for these principals are coming from those ASE who have, high jacked, high places in religion and Governments. In this article we shall see relation in religion and crime. Later on some time in future we shall see relation in government and crime.

Trap
On one side we see that so called sadhus and saints incessantly preach for non-violence and peace and principles of tolerance to gullible believers and making them incompetent in resisting the violence by anti social element; the other side shows that this same anti social elements is taking full advantage of the situation and create problems for the peace loving people. At times one may suspect that there is some sort of conspiracy amongst the two, sadhus and saints on one side and anti social element on the other side to exploit the docility of the believers. ASE (anti social element) is feeling confident that they are safe as the masses of believers are not going to take any action against them and they are going to depend on police to protect them. The sorry part is that police and government are also infested with the similar ASE. I call this a trap. We are trapped in the fix designed by ASE in sadhus and preachers on one side and criminals (ASE) on the other side. Occasionally, we see occurrence of such cases where peace loving docile believers loose their cool and revolt to punish the ASE but then there, Laws also controlled by the pretending ASE, comes in the way and instead of holding the erring ASE arrest the gullible. This encourages the erring ASE more and the crime continues in the society. Presently, we see that the society is under an overdose of these principles of non-violence, peace and pardon.

Is ASE a virus?
I began to feel that the infesting of the society by ASE is similar to infesting of our body with a virus. Virus spreads by converting good cells in the body into bad cells due to virus. Something similar appears to be happening in the society. As some docile and believing people realize that to be ASE is advantageous over remaining believers and polite; they gradually change into new breed of ASE. ASE are different from actual criminals in the sense that ASE keep on pretending to be perfect believers and good citizens and criminals are candid in exposing themselves as criminals. Detecting criminals is easy but to do that with ASE is very difficult. Two-facedness of the ASE makes them non traceable in the society. An ASE in the police supports ASE in the government and public; at the same time ASE in the judiciary gives such rulings that ASE elsewhere get additional protection and lease for more nefarious activities in the society. At times philosophical justifications are provided by ASE in the religious places. All this makes it very difficult to know what is right and what is wrong for lesser intelligent people! Confusion prevails upon all!

Confusion
One more interesting thing I observed and you will also appreciate the complication involve in the matter. There could be two or more ASEs having opposite interests and they conflict creating all the more complicated situation for the people. The confusion keeps on increasing for the ordinary people who are not fully aware of all these complications. All ASEs are smart and that is one more difference between a criminal and an ASE. Criminal shall push in to indulge in a crime hurriedly while an ASE shall wait and seek suitable opportunity to begin the advances. They are patient and smart. An ASE knows how to justify their wrong doings and can explain that they are not wrong; giving fabulous connotations referring to the books of gospels from some religion, commonly practiced in that society. They even give out new philosophies and religions to suit their purpose. Many books have been written by some ASE to misguide the masses. Adding to more confusion.

Vegetarianism
Some opine that vegetarian diet reduces percentage of some hormones in the body which flow in the brain cells and who are responsible to give valor and courage to resist wrong. As a result a vegetarian society is more docile and objectionably tolerant. Making activities of ASE more pronounced. That may be the reason why all saints and sadhus who are actually agents of this ASE are insisting that the society should take to vegetarianism and they oppose non-vegetarian diet aggressively.

How to solve this confusion?
In short the bottom line is today religion is being used to protect ASE activities in the society. The question is how to remedy this? A very good intelligence is an answer to this problem but alas... it is absent in most of the human societies in this world. Amongst all books of religion Bhagwatgita appears to be the most appropriate because, in that book lord has suggested appropriate and just violence in the wake of injustice. This gospel of Hindus preaches ‘violence for justice’ and rules out absolute non-violence Arjun advocated at the beginning of the dialogue as a result after the Gita a big war commenced. Unfortunately, none of the commentators could understand that and have almost always misinterpreted the gospel of Gita. May be, these commentators were in fact ASE! Here I am using this word gospel in renewed meaning as “book of religion”. Somebody should endeavor to highlight this aspect of Gita so that it may help us understand the true teaching of Hindu religion through Gita.

Some suggest that religions should be replaced by order of ethics and god be replaced by goodness. Do you agree?

ASEs are hidden as political leaders, social leaders, saints, sadhus, rulers, judicial authorities and so on and so forth. Beware and try to locate them. Watch out if you are an ASE?


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